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A HUNDRED YEARS. 



One hundred busy years ! How much they mean ! 
What mighty revolutions have they seen ! 
What progress of the arts ! What progress of the pen ! 
What breaking down of wrong ! What lifting up of men I 

Well may we boast our victories nobly won ; 

Our rapid progress towards the setting sun ; 

Our broad domain — its every acre free, 

Stretching its giant arms from sea to sea ; 

Our white-winged commerce o'er the stormy brine ; 

Our wealth of prairie, forest, farm and mine; 

And, more than these — what still the spirit fires, 

Those sterling virtues of our noble sires, 

Which wedded them to freedom as to life. 

In face of frowns and threats and deadly strife, 

And held them to their self-imposed decree 

To pay no sordid tax on British tea. 

They stood as stands the rock upon the shore 

When angry waves around it foam and roar ; 

And, bending not before the tryant's blow, 

Hurled swift defiance back upon tlie foe. 

You know the rest. Their stubborn, plucky will 
Brought Concord, Lexington and Bunker-Hill. 
It brought stern war ; and men with bated breath 
Saw the destroyer, red with fire and death. 
Stalk througli the land to lav the fairest low 



And Bcatter wi(Je the direful seeds of woe. 

But, ''where then; is a will there is a way," 

And so there dawned at last, a better day. 

Patient endurance ! Ah ! it conquers still ! 

It forms the climax of a manly will I 

It foiled the evil purposes designed 

And gave a new born Nation to mankind. 

Nay, more ! unknown it held at its command 

These hundred years of progress in its hand : 

These years of toil and growth, all richly fraught 

With schools, and chui'ches, and unfettered thought- 

A precious gift, a princelj% royal dower. 

Of onward progress and advancing power! 

The age is ''fast," and whatsoever lingers 
Is rudely thrust aside bj^ nimbler lingers. 
Life's panorama of eventfiil range 
Gliiters with visions of amazing change. 

Our mothers with the needle slowlj'^ wrought, 

Chatting with children or absorbed in thought : 

Patient, persistent, grave perhaps, or gay. 

Obedient to tlieir needs tliey stitched away. 

Anil oui- good households, in those olden days. 

Attest the merits of their faithful waj^s. 

But, times have changed. Behold another scene I 

List to the pacing click of tliat machine I 

Follow the needle — if, perchance, the eye 

Can catch its motions as the stitches fly 

See how the stutt' moves on all neatly sewed, 

Trending its wonted way as on a road. 

Corded, or hemmed, or gathered, as you please. 

And moving forward with surpassing ease. 

Its stitch the very magic of our times. 

More deftly woven than our magic rhymes. 

Those homely meihods could not always last; 



1 



The ''good old times" must drop into the past. 

The nimble knitting- on a wintry night, 

Around the blazing tire, cheerful and l)right; 

The twirling spindle, and the maiden's tread. 

As, with a whirl, she drew the tiny thread ; 

The beam and shuttle of the household loom — 

Which had its corniir or its special room ; 

The flax and distaft" of the^'' little wheel;" 

The winding into knots upon the reel; 

Are household pictures faded and gone by ; 

And, in their place a thousand spindles ply, 

A thousand looms, moved by some mountain stream 

Or, ready, bus}^ many-handed steam. 

Steam is our hand-maid, faithful, deft and strong, 
Tliat pushes fast the moving world along. 
It speeds the shuttle, spins the spindle round ; 
AVheels monstrous burdens o'er the graded ground ; 
Brings iron from the mine, and coal and lead ; 
Lifts rocks and metals from tlieir mountain bed ; 
Rolls out our iron, beats the pond'rous trip ; 
Hammers and saws and sails the fastest ship ; 
Stitches our garments, ploughs for unsown seed, 
And prints the Daily Paper which we read. 

The Daily Paper, now in evei-y hand, 

Sheds light and knowledge through the teeming land 

And we behold the PRESS a ruling power. 

Grown stronger by the change of every hour. 

The wooden Kamage, working witliout stint. 
For our good sires a hundred sheets might print 
Within the hour. Long since it passed away. 
A thing most useful, it has had its day. 
Oh, Franklin ! couldst thou from thy sleep arise ! 
What thrilling wondei- ! what enwrapped surprise ! 
Thy sympathetic breast would surely know 



While gazing on a mam moth, working Hoe ! 
Heavy and strong, and moving with a will. 
It whirls and rattles like a cotton-mill. 
And many a snowy hank piled hugely high, 
And many a hand is taxed for its supply; 
And, Oh ! Amazing ! it with ease completes 
Within the hoiu', full twenty thousa4^d sheets. 

t? 
So, too, of old, the painter slowly wrought. 
With his good eye the face or scene he caught, 
And then with color, brush, and master skill 
Proceeded patiently his sketch to till. 
Few walls were garnished then with works of art ; 
Few pictures graven — save upon the heart. 
But. since Daguerre, iio painter like the sun ; 
Who takes our portraits almost on the run ; 
Whose brush of rays with color overflows 
And every ardent look a picture shows. 
To rich and poor he gives his genial ray, 
And gems for all are radiant every day. 
Companions, lovers, parents, children, all; 
The poor man's Cottage and the rich man's Hall, 
Attest the largeness of the painter's will, 
And share the bounties of his matchless skill. 

In "'seventy-six," if Post-man 'did not fall, 

Letters went slowly in the weekly mall ; 

And, if demands more urgent chanced to press 

Kelays of horses proved a fleet express. 

Behold what change ! With rail and steam combined 

And daily mails, the news would lag behind 

But for those magic wires which stretch afar, 

On which the lightning drives his unseen car. 

His flying coui-sers sweep along their way. 

O'er land and sea, by darkness and by day, 

Now, down beneath the ocean's surging tide. 



On the long- cable throuii:li the deep they ride, 
Now, mountmg on the endless net of wires, 
On, on, with speed that never flag's or tires, 
Connting all time and distance as but naught, 
Leaping or flying, as a flash or thought, 
To bring from every land subdued by man. 
From England, Egypt, China and Japan, 
The news, like manna, gathered tVesh and sweet 
To be reported in the daily sheet. 

The fastest travel in the olden age 

Was in the rocking, bounding, four-horse stage. 

Which, swinging, jolting, as it rolled along 

Kehind its heav}^ horses, slow and strong. 

Full often pausing to obtain the mail - 

Or fresher horses, as the vvoi-n ones fail. 

Could, in its steady trend of night and day 

Scarce make its hundred miles of weary way. 

The driver was a man of conscious i)ower, 

Of business air and prompt to day and hour. 

Who answered questions and would oft expand 

On title deeds and ownership of land. 

Or village gossip, tales and local lore — 

And, Oh ! the bundles, messages and notes he bore ! 

Missiles of business, love, and strange embraces ; 

Of shows and auctions, trainings and the races; 

And wlien his mellow horn blew loud and clear 

To sound a warning that the stage was near, 

A crowd of gossips, thus informed before. 

Would meet in knots around the tavern door. 

To get their papers, notes or other dues. 

Or see the team, or hear or tell the news. 

He, like a royal sovereign, had his throne. 

From which he ruled his princely realm alone ; 

And, when he gathered up his double reins, 

That magic power that govf'rns and restrains, 



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No Emperor, witli high, iinijerial will, 

Could wield his stately power with hetter skill. 

His watchful subjects, mindful of his way. 

Bent all their humors to his fitful sway. 

And if, perchance, in aught they seemed to lack, 

The long- lash quivered with a thundriug crack. 

While every muscle trembled at the sound. 

And every iioof was ready to rebound. 

Those days have gone. The stage has passed away 

And, in its place, the level, iron way 

Bears on its ti-ack the stream of busy life 

That sweeps with currents strong as human strife. 

The iron liorse with glowing embers fed, 

Paces, impatient on his graded bed 

And breatiiing smoke and sparks of glowing fire 

Suggests a demon or some monster dire. 

But, kindly treated, on his trusty road. 

No ox is half so patient of his load. 

With scores of laden cars bound to his train 

Ho bears our freight and travel o'er the main, 

Laughs at all toil and, with Herculean power, 

Wheels ofi" his load at sixty miles an hour. 

In morals, too, the ever waging strife 
Bears hard upon the hoary wrongs of life.— 
Strange ! that our sires who pledged their all to be 
From every foreign power so nobly free. 
Should not have spurned the cotHe and the chain 
And banished slavery from tlieir wide domain ! 
But, no : alas ! For twenty shameful years 
The licensed slave-trade filled the land with tears. 
And when, at last, the foreign traffic o'er. 
Our ships their stolen freigiit no longer bore. 
Bondmen at home, scourged to reluctant toil, 
With sweat and blood bedewed our virgin soil. 



Then followed strife which pronnsed no repose 
Till the black crime was beaten out by blows. 
Fierce, and more tierce, the an^ry contest ra<^ed 
Till its wild fary all our STATES engaged ; 
And slavery, beaten oft, '' pushed to the wall," 
Met, on a field of blood, its tinal fall. 

Oh, direful war I destruction in tiiy hand ! 
The sword, the torch awaiting thy command ! 
Engine of Tyrants, since the world began, 
To build up Empire and belittle man ! 
Beg«4ting woes no tongue can ever t<dl. 
Anil breathing sulphur from the pit of hell ! 
Thou com'st in mercy when thou com'st to save ! 
Thou com'st an angel — to redeem the slave ! 

Within the cycle of tliese hiuulred years 

What clouds disperse I What darkness disappears ! 

What explorations science has begun I 

What triumph after triumph has it won ! 

The moon and stars that gem the ai'ch of night 

Are caught in shades of photographic light : 

The golden sun, that royal fount of day. 

That drives his tiery car so far away. 

Is not so far but science can evoke 

His hidden secrets with the spectroscope ; 

And the deep sea, far down beneath its waves, 

Can iiold no more tlie treasures of its caves. 

'Twere well, perhaps, that science, sound and slow. 
Meant only what the mind could surely know. 
And were content in looking on creation 
To see beliind the CAUSE of all causa/ion. 
But science, proudly grown, no God confesses. 
And builds the Universe on slender guesses. 
The nebulae that shine to us from far 
Are loose materials of a forming star; 



10 



The rings of Saturn, circling round their globe, 

That walk the azure in their silver robe, 

Are denser matter, hindered on its way 

To join the planet, where it is to stay ; 

While a thin ether, which the earth embraces, 

Filling afar the interstellar spaces, 

Is improvised to bear the flashing ray 

That brings, in wave like throbs, the golden day ; 

And life, in all its forms, finds quick solution, 

In Spencer's solvent — endless evolution. 

Huxley and Darwin follow Spencer's lead 

And Tyndall well expounds the common creed. 

He with a trustful faith, sublimely firm. 

Traces all life -'to one primordial germ;" 

And all he needs the gravest doubts to scatter 

Is to '' define anew existing matter ;"' 

When, to his mind, the reason will be plain 

That any God in Nature is in vain ; 

That man came up through insect, toad, and donkey 

To reach, at lengtli, the status of a monkey : 

And, changing slowly, as a mouKcy can. 

Rubbed ott"his tail and found himself a man. 

How kind in science thus to let us know 

From what beginnings thought and mind can grow ! 

For, if a germ, from its minute perfection. 

Can rise, by evolution and selection. 

To be an ape ; and thence in ages can 

By more selection, grow to be a man, 

Then, man, touched often by this Aaron's rod, 

Will, by selection, grow to be a God. 

A hundred years ago where was the West? 
The migrant's hopeful home, the settler's rest? 
The Alleghanies were our bounding zone : 



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And all bej^oiid was mysterj^— unknown. 
That mighty valley, now with states bestud, 
Through which the Mississippi rolls its Hood, 
Was tang-l(Ml woods and wild uncultured lands, 
Koamed by tierce beasts and naked, savage bands 
The golden-coast, with all its treasures rare ; 
Its niiglity trees; its mountains ribbed and bare; 
Its rapid rivers choked with water-falls ; 
Its gloomy canons with their rocky walls; 
Its mines of gold and silver, salt and clay ; 
Its famous city and unequalled bay ; 
Its deep Yosemite, encased in stone — 
Were in the distant future — blank, unknown. 

A hinidred years ago, just as to-day, 

The broad Potomac swept its devious way. 

And dear Mount Vernon from its sheltering wood 

Looked down, as how, upon the moving flood. 

But Washington with all its towers and domes. 

Its gilded palaces and humble homes, 

Has nestled down upon its river shore 

Long since the war for liberty was o'er. 

And, far and near, on river, lake and plain, 

From sea to sea, in all this grand domain, 

I'hus cities rise to mark the rolling years. 

And thriftful progress everywhere appears. 

As through tlie clouds a gleam of light will play. 
And, glinting backward, paint reflected day. 
So, through the past, reflected we may see, 
Glimpses of what our futiu-e years will be. 
But glimpses only ; for the clouds still hide. 
And naught can draw the dusky veil aside. 
But who can doubt, if thus the past appears, 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



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015 785 337 



Onr country's <»'lory in tlie coming years? 

Its liappy homes with grace and culture crowned, 

Wliere liglit. religion, faith and truth abound. 

Its teeming millions living more and more 

For that great Future lying just before ; 

And its strong arm stretched out to shield and save 

The struggling nations that are true and brave. 

So may it be ! Its armor ever bright, 

Its s^i'ord drawn only to maintain the right. 



Washington, D. C. 1870. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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